Working collaboratively, the Fort Collins IT team and consultants from Arisant (a consulting firm that helps companies solve business and technology challenges using Oracle solutions) and Oracle created two critical planning tools. The first was an in-depth technical assessment of the city’s current server and database environment. The second tool was a total cost of ownership (TCO) model to calculate and compare hardware and licensing expenses over a five-year period. This financial analysis was based on using Oracle cloud solutions to eventually move all the city’s Oracle workloads. 

“At first, the cloud seemed more expensive, but in comparison to the cost of hardware creep, especially for the annual hardware maintenance and license fees, the five-year TCO for cloud was much better.”

Fort Collins has already gained several qualitative benefits from its new cloud infrastructure: Support for a multitenant design. By obtaining the servers and other hardware elements as part of the cloud subscription, IT staff no longer need to deal with complex license tracking or predict annual support costs. Virtualization and multitenant capabilities in the Oracle cloud solution allow IT to easily separate workloads and allocate expenses by department. 

The multitenant cloud design simplifies the management of multiple Oracle environments and speeds routine tasks. For example, Sanchez indicates an environment refresh that previously took hours now takes less than five minutes. 

“When you’re implementing a big system, you need to move databases and change the environment almost daily. If we had stayed with traditional licensing, we wouldn’t have been able to afford a multitenant model. But in the cloud, everything we need for multitenant is included in the subscription.” 

Time savings. Since the cloud subscription includes access to all database features, administrators don’t need to search for a server that has the right licenses to run a specific workload. Server teams also save time because much of the hardware management and software patching is streamlined by the Oracle cloud solutions. 

Easy scalability. The flexibility to scale server and storage capacity in the cloud will benefit the city as it migrates other business systems in the future. This scalability would be difficult in an on-premises infrastructure because of licensing restrictions and costs.

Sanchez offers three tips for governments planning to transition a core business system to a cloud infrastructure. First, expect a steep learning curve when implementing a new system, server infrastructure and database environment together. Fine-tuning the many details of the implementation will take time and careful consideration. Second, prepare a TCO analysis and a technical assessment collaboratively with the vendor and a systems consultant. The diverse knowledge and perspectives of these parties will help identify all important considerations. Finally, provide database administrators, server teams and application developers training and time to learn how to work within the cloud environment. Consider running a proof-of concept project and augmenting staff with consultants to obtain additional insights and experience.

The Fort Collins IT team had a tight timeline to implement the new CIS and supporting cloud infrastructure. The simplicity and flexibility of the Oracle cloud solutions were key to meeting their tight schedule. “Our citizens are excited about having a new choice for internet service, and now we have the technology resources we need to support the underlying databases and information systems,” says Sanchez.